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The Real Product Market Fit

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Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#51

Post by hugs »

mwseibel wrote: post #21
Wilduck wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't ask you how to identify these markets because I think it's fairly clear that it takes dedication, thoughtfulness, and experience. I would like to ask if you believe there are many markets with unserved "hair on fire" customers. Are there thousands of these problems waiting to be solved? My intuition is that there are many people with hair on fire problems, but not many of those problems generalize to products…

I think there are tons of hair of fire problems - what's cool is that new products (if they are successful) often create new problems.

> new products (if they are successful) often create new problems.

This rings true to me. And I've been accused of doing just this. In 2004, my "hair on fire" problem was trying to figure out how to test web apps that heavily used JavaScript (which really was a rare thing back then), so I created Selenium to solve my dev team's testing problem. Fast forward four years later to 2008, the next "hair on fire" problem to solve was that maintaining a lab of computers dedicated to Selenium testing was labor-intensive and expensive, so then I founded Sauce Labs as a way to rent out machines for testing. Sauce could only have existed because of the problems created (accidentally, I swear!) by heavy use of Selenium.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#52

Post by iskonkul »

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Hey Michael, is it imperative to have a problem to start a company and get to product/market fit? I am thinking of successful companies like Starbucks and P&G whose customers are definitely not in hair on fire mode. Or is this framework of getting to product market fit for tech companies only? Your thoughts?

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#53

Post by PeterisP »

mwseibel wrote: post #17
cehrnrooth wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for writing this, one of your quotes "Founders often hold too tightly onto solutions and too loosely onto problems" really resonated. If someone were evaluating their next opportunity to tackle, would you recommend they focus less on identifying a specific pain point (that they may know how to solve), and instead identify a large market and then search for inefficiencies (even if they have less domain expertis…

I think I'd optimize for a personal pain point or a pain point of family/friends.

It seems a counterproductive direction given the recent years explosion of startups and e.g. app development.

People and their pain are very different in general, but rather similar in specific groups. Almost everyone spends almost all of their time in a bubble that excludes the pain points of most of the world. And, for someone with the skills, possibility and desire to run a startup, it's exceedingly likely that your market is oversaturated already.

Pick any demographic metric.

For age, the personal pain points of 15-30 people have an overabundance of solutions, but the pain points associated with 53 year olds or 9 year old kids have more gaps and possibly even more paying power.

For lifestyle, the pain points of single young adults are oversaturated while needs of large families (possibly excluding baby-apps) are not, again, due to the peculiarities of startup employee demographics.

For types of location, even the minor pain (inconvenience?) points of people living in highly dense urban areas have all kinds of startup solutions, while pain points specific to millions of people living in USA rural areas are pretty much ignored.

For social groups, the subcultures popular in Silicon Valley have their specific needs filled much more than the various minorities and cultures which are mostly elsewhere. Pardon me for a crude example, but for example, there is a competitive market in gay dating apps/services with a lot of solutions developed; however, the USA LGBT population is comparable in size and thus purchasing power to the Mormon population - if you're starting a new service, which market has the larger potential for you to serve a need that's not already served by existing solutions?

For technological aptitude, the needs of early adopters are obviously served by new tech, while you definitely can build solid businesses designed to serve the far more numerous people who want to avoid bleeding edge tech or even don't have the skills or desire to use industry-standard tech - if they still have the same needs, then making that tech more friendly to them or more distant from them (having you do stuff for them by that tech, instead of having them interact directly in detail) will bring you good revenue.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#54

Post by PeterisP »

btcboss wrote: post #42
mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

"If you handed them a brick they would still grab it and try to hit themselves on the head to put out the fire. You need to find problems so dire that users are willing try half-baked, v1, imperfect solutions." this kind of falls into line with Reid Hoffman's famous quote: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late." I think these statements paint a wide brush and fail…

"If your product's core value prop is UI/UX/ease of use" then you're obviously not entering/creating a new market, nor you are attempting to find a product/market fit, are you?

It pretty much implies that you're attempting to overtake existing competitors who have found product/market fit, where people have options to fill their need but do so grudgingly because of their UX quality. Doing that can be a solid business plan, but it's very, very different from the type of new-product-discovery startups that Reif Hoffman was talking about.

If the people are paying for an existing crappy product with poor UI/UX, then that illustrates a valid need and building an easier-to-use product can greatly increase the size of that market.

However, if currently people are not eager to pay for that need, then I'd wager that simply providing UI/UX/ease of use won't change that. If their need isn't sufficient to put up with the minor bother of sucky UX (at least for 10% of most needy part of the market), then that need isn't also sufficient to put up with the much larger bother of paying you adequately.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#55

Post by pea »

Great article. Another good way we've had this explained is: if someone is in a burning building, you are the option of jumping out of the window.. There may be a 95% chance they will die, but they're in so much pain that they'll make the jump (even though they normally never would).

Do you think this is more geared for entry strategy (getting the tip of the spear in)? In an ideal world, you could find something where building a small quantum converges with solving this degree of pain.. though of course the stars do not always align that easily...

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#56

Post by beat »

panic wrote: post #43
beat wrote: post #8

Makes me think of something I say occasionally... you need a problem so compelling that customers will pay for a buggy, incomplete solution, because a buggy, incomplete solution is what you're building.

And then we wonder why the world is full of buggy, incomplete solutions!

It's the dream of every engineer to get to make something that doesn't suck, right? But the 80/20 rule applies. Getting through that last 20% that is suboptimal is 80% of the work. Every hour you spend polishing your way to perfection is an hour you don't spend adding new features or creating new products. Every bug fix is paid for with opportunity cost - at a very high compound interest rate, if you're in a startup.

I've come to the conclusion that if your code doesn't kinda suck, you're doing something wrong. You're wasting effort. Actually, I came to a much harsher conclusion than that - I've concluded that all software sucks. That all software hovers near the line between "barely works" and "doesn't work". Why? Because by the time you get to feature-complete, if it still works, it's so riddled with compromise and bad decisions that you never want to look at that code again. You want to start something fresh and new, and THIS time, you won't make all those stupid mistakes! This time, it won't suck!

It always sucks, in the end.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#57

Post by soneca »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #48
soneca wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure you are still paying attention to this thread, but... When you have a marketplace, would it require a hair is on fire problem for both supply and demand? I work at a startup marketplace where we clearly have a good solution for a hair on fire problem at the demand side, but our supply side isn't just that interested. They sign up, but their engagement is very inconsistent to say the least.

What problem does your marketplace solve for suppliers? Does it get them extra revenue? Is the amount significant to them? Do they have to do something extra/different to work through your platform (e.g. different process, different service level, pay commission to you)? Is it still worth it? Do they use it once and then stop? If so, just ask them.

It solves a problem, that will only get extra revenue at the long term, for which they have alternatives and has no incentives for continuous engagement (it is good enough to use it only once in a while).

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#58

Post by panic »

beat wrote: post #56
panic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then we wonder why the world is full of buggy, incomplete solutions!

It's the dream of every engineer to get to make something that doesn't suck , right? But the 80/20 rule applies. Getting through that last 20% that is suboptimal is 80% of the work. Every hour you spend polishing your way to perfection is an hour you don't spend adding new features or creating new products. Every bug fix is paid for with opportunity cost - at a very high compound interest rate, if you're in a startup…

I think it's possible to write good software, but I agree that it's difficult to do at a startup. At the very least, there are kinds of software (aerospace and medical software for example) where hovering between "barely works" and "doesn't work" isn't acceptable, and the people responsible found ways to improve their software beyond that point.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#59

Post by beat »

panic wrote: post #58
beat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the dream of every engineer to get to make something that doesn't suck , right? But the 80/20 rule applies. Getting through that last 20% that is suboptimal is 80% of the work. Every hour you spend polishing your way to perfection is an hour you don't spend adding new features or creating new products. Every bug fix is paid for with opportunity cost - at a very high compound interest rate, if you're in a startup…

I think it's possible to write good software, but I agree that it's difficult to do at a startup. At the very least, there are kinds of software (aerospace and medical software for example) where hovering between "barely works" and "doesn't work" isn't acceptable, and the people responsible found ways to improve their software beyond that point.

It's not really making software that more than barely works... it's changing the definition of "barely works". I've spent most of my career in banking and health care, stuff under heavy regulation. The regulations become part of the requirements. And within those bounds, banking and health care software barely work. Avionic software barely works. The software that keeps your pacemaker going? Barely works.

Remember, a pacemaker that doesn't work 1% of the time doesn't work. Specs are different.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#60

Post by nojvek »

gmarx wrote: post #13
mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

It's a charming ideal that I think is vanishingly rare in real life. I also can't see how the hair on fire thing fits with any of the top startups and ex startups I know. In fact I dare say the rapidly rising user count is a separate story from the hair on fire story. The hair on fire tends to be a specialty business problem and still, against all reason, tends to require a pretty rigorous sales cycle. The problems I…

Cool analogy. However don't some startups actually open up things that we didn't even know were painful?

E.g I was happy staying in hotels. I wasn't on fire looking to stay at someone's house. I'm guessing the hosts weren't on fire either having random strangers over.

Facebook, Google, Amazon. I was very happy with the alternatives. They just did somethings better. Although Facebook is kind of dead to me. Haven't opened in months.

I do like the analogy of getting overwhelmed by customers and having scaling problems.

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